Academy Awards revive memories of Bob Hope

This Sunday, most TV sets throughout the country — and even throughout the industrialized world — will be tuned to the live broadcast from Hollywood of this year’s Academy Awards presentations.

While I’m a lifelong movie buff whose favorite cable TV channel is Turner Classic Movies, the Academy Awards telecasts have never made much of an impression on me.

I find them overly long, and in too many instances, just plain dull.

Generally, the inane banter between the presenters — most of whom are supposed to be professional actors — is embarrassingly amateurish.

As for the long, drawn-out acceptance speeches — for the most part, if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all.

Possibly the weakest part of the entire evening is the routinely poor performance of the master of ceremonies. With relatively few exceptions, the hosts are stiff, don’t know how to react humorously to the changing situations around them and appear to be truly in “over their heads.”

Crystal was almost always funny, and quick on the draw when it came to making retorts to things that were happening. He was also blessed with a personal love of movies. Carson, a master of the one-liner, had an extraordinarily difficult-to-fracture ego and was never above self-deprecation. Yet Hope was in a class by himself. The fact that he was invited back so many times was indicative of how successfully he performed.

For me, at least, it’s hard to believe that 35 years have come and gone since Hope hosted his final Oscar telecast. That’s obviously because from 1939 through 1977, he was as much a part of the ceremonies as the Oscar statuettes that are given to each winner.

I first heard the name Bob Hope when I was about 8 years old. His starring role in the 1939 mystery movie “The Cat and the Canary” was the talk of all the kids in my old Philly neighborhood. Those who had already seen it came back telling the rest of us about the zany antics of this very funny guy and had us all trying to come up with the dime admission price so we could go see it for ourselves.

Within months, we discovered Hope was being teamed up with singer-actor Bing Crosby and the glamorous Dorothy Lamour in “The Road to Singapore,” the first of the now-classic Hope-Crosby “Road” movies.

Adding to our delight, we soon discovered he was on the radio. Every Wednesday evening (if we could cajole our parents into letting us stay up a little later than usual), we could hear Hope wisecracking his way through a half-hour session with Hollywood’s top celebrities.

During the next decade, I’d enjoy his unique humor in dozens of movies and scores of radio shows. After joining the military, I’d finally get to see him perform in person and have the chance to meet him. Although tickets were normally required for admission to the network radio and TV shows, exceptions were generally made for those in uniform. Throughout 1951 and 1952, I attended several of Hope’s broadcasts, including a number with Crosby. On one occasion, he spotted several of us and had us moved to the head of the line.

I had the good fortune to meet Hope twice. The first time was backstage after one of those legendary USO shows he had hosted at the Camp Pendleton (Calif.) Marine Corps base where I was stationed in 1951. Along with several other Marines, I had a few moments to converse with him and enjoy his one-on-one humor.

The second meeting occurred about a year later, when on a three-day pass, and along with a fellow Marine and a sailor, I was being given a special tour of Hollywood’s Paramount Studios. It was still the “golden age” of the motion picture studios, and at Paramount, at least half a dozen major films were in progress.

For several hours, we were ushered from one soundstage to another to meet some of the biggest names in motion pictures and watch them perform before the cameras. Late in the afternoon, our studio guide led us toward a huge indoor stage where we had been told a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby-Dorothy Lamour film, “Road to Bali,” was in production. It was the sixth entry in the trio’s string of seven successful “Road” films.

Waiting near the entrance for the brilliant-red “No Admittance” lights to stop flashing, we barely noticed the individual stretched out on a canvas chaise lounge beside us. His clothing was covered by a large chenille robe. A towel was draped loosely around his head and over his shoulders, and his large sunglasses made it impossible to determine whether he was awake or sleeping.

Then, unexpectedly, he spoke to us. “How’s the Spam these days, fellas?” he asked. Spam was a form of a still-popular canned ham that was then used widely by the military.

We glanced down, and as he reached up and removed his dark glasses, we immediately recognized Hope’s smiling face. He jumped to his feet, shook hands with each of us and began a conversation that lasted for the better part of 20 minutes. He asked us about our families, our home towns, where we were stationed and whether we were heading for Korea. He smiled and joked that he was again working with Crosby — he referred to him as “Dad” several times — and had us continuously laughing.

By contrast with some well-known Hollywood personalities of that day who would have gone out of their way to avoid being discovered, Hope had chosen to reveal himself to us and was doing his best to entertain us.

In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Hope by declaring him the “first and only ‘honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces.’ “ He had appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.

While Hope never won an Oscar for his acting, he was given four honorary awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and, in 1960, it presented him with the extremely prestigious Gene Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Bob Hope died in July 2003, just two months after his 100th birthday.

Jerry Jonas’ column appears

in the Sunday Life section.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.